There's Nothing Suspicious (Izzy & roommates)

[Rhett Goddard]

After leaving Pilot Ridge's downtown, Rhett rushed back to Hammel in a cab. He had a big yellow beach bag in his right shoulder and brown leather satchel in his left one. When he went out that morning, however, he didn't have such things, he had just bought them. And why? Well, the satchel was filled with dog toys and food. But really, why? Because inside the big beach bag, a, quite cute, white puppy was hiding. The, very understandable, question repeated: why had Rhett smuggled a dog into Hammel? It was a good question, one that he wouldn't answer to anyone, actually, which was more incentive to not get caught with it inside the school. It wasn't like he was planning on keeping him through what's left of his Hammel life, it was only while he managed to find a family for the little thing, or so he repeated to himself many, many, times in the cab to school.

Walking through the courtyard was easier than Rhett had initially thought. He hated being the center of attention and he had thought that a teenager boy carrying a beach bag was something worthy of being looked at strangely, but it wasn't, apparently, and the story repeated itself through the dorm building as he walked towards his room. Two down, one to go. Please, let nobody be in. Rhett sort-of prayed, hoping not to find neither of his roommates after opening his door, obviously not wanting them to find out about the dog, which, as he neared the door numbered 502, seemed more and more like a really difficult idea. Dogs smell. And leave a mess. And Bark. God, can I get expelled from this? He shrugged the idea away. He was not going to get caught. It's just for a few days and out. He repeated in his mind as he opened the door.

"Who are you?" He asked quickly while closing the door, being rather, and obviously, nervous of seeing an unknown blonde in his room, knowing instantly that it wasn't a friend of Jordan or Aaron.

[Izzy James]

Izzy was trying to arrange his music collection just so. That meant lining up CDs and vinyl in a specific order which only made sense to him. It was one of those tasks that nearly took all concentration, and had Izzy not been also listening to music and checking his phone every few seconds, it would have been quite a mentally intensive task. Fortunately, he'd done it enough times to make it rote by now.

Not so rote was the arrival. Izzy turned, half-smiling (which looks uncannily like a smirk unless you try very hard). There stood a guy which he didn't recognize, not that that wasn't unusual, what with Izzy being all shiny and new.

The blonde extended a hand, the one not still clutching the cell phone like it was a lifeline. "Hey, I'm Isaiah James, Izzy, actually, and I just got assigned this dorm and all. Sorry, was trying to, you know, get things in my general area without overwhelming the rest of you and is your bag moving?"

He'd stopped and pointed at the bag, which he could have sworn had just wiggled. Izzy paused, looking from the bag to the guy holding it, wondering if there was a body or something equally suspicious. Pets were allowed, right? So nobody would smuggle something like that in.

"Tell me you haven't kidnapped a midget. Because I'm not sure I'm ready to start covering for dwarf-napping just yet."

[Rhett Goddard]

Great. A new roommate. Rhett immediately examined the other blonde up and down cautiously. He never liked the idea of roommates, but he had gotten used to it by now, but whenever a roommate was changed or added, well he didn't like it. Getting used to someone else quickly enough for the dorm-sharing to be not-weird was crucial, and even though Rhett was good at learning things from people quickly, he just never liked to do so because he had to, instead of because he wanted to. I just hope he's not a snitch.

"No." He immediately replied Izzy. "Of course my bag is not moving, that's crazy." A bark came out of the beach bag. "And as a matter of fact, it is, most definitely, not barking either."

Rhett sprinted towards his room, where he carefully placed the beach bag in the ground, and proceeded to drop the satchel. The dog, however, sensing that he was finally on the floor, jumped out of the bag and started to playfully run around Rhett.

"No!" He exclaimed at the puppy while seeing it run out the bedroom towards the common area. "Wait!" Rhett grumbled, running behind it. "Stay!" He pointed at the dog, who, strangely, stopped running and instead started sharing stares at Izzy and Rhett while wagging his tail. Rhett repeated his dog's actions and stared at his new roommate before giving his attention back to the puppy. "Good... dog... I guess."

[Izzy James]

Izzy shrugged. Sounded like a dog smuggling operation. Again, last Izzy checked, not against the rules. So as long as the creature didn't start gnawing on guitars or something, Izzy had no problem with it. He'd turned back to the music collection.

Humming "Day Tripper" while organizing the "B" section of the music (and trying to decide if Abbey Road was better than Sgt. Peppers', a decision to rival the hardest of test questions, Izzy was more than a little distracted when the barking started. He paused mid selection, turning to look over his shoulder. Sure enough, a blazing ball of wild fur bounded into the room, tongue at the ready. It stayed on command, and seemed undecided on whether it should be bothering its master or the blonde guy.

"Well, that's definitely not a midget, at least," said Izzy. He rose to his feet, studied the dog for a few seconds, then looked up at Rhett. Izzy's eyebrows climbed slightly, and a smirk twisted the edge of his mouth. "So, you're sneaking a dog into the dorms. Somebody allergic or are you just starved for thrills? 'Cuz I'm pretty sure you could just, I don't know, challenge someone to a fight or take up crime fighting. Though this is, uh, cute."

He looked at the dog and tilted his head, wondering. At least with the dog, they had a decent chance of attracting more girls here. What better line was there than "want to check out my puppy?"

[Aaron Walker]

AJ never really spent much time in the doors. He saw Rhett and Jordan from time to time, but they had never had more of a conversation that “Hey” or “See ya later”. It wasn’t that AJ didn’t like them, he just couldn’t stand to stick around indoors for very long. Especially in the confined space of his room. Most of the time, he only appeared in the room to change clothes or take a shower. He didn’t even sleep in his bedroom for every single night.

He had left the room early that morning with plans to draw smiley faces all over the campus sidewalks. He thought the other students could use some cheering up. Some of them had seemed a little down lately. Since AJ hadn’t attended the yearly talk and didn’t participate in talk of ongoing dramas, he had no idea what had occurred during it. So he didn’t realize that may be the reason for some of the students being down in the dumps lately. He had made it all the way to the front of the main building, with a few distractions along the way, before it occurred to him that he had left his sidewalk chalk in his room.

When he opened the door to his room, the first thing he noticed was a puppy sitting in the middle of the floor. AJ dropped to all fours and crawled over the little ball of fluff, rolling around with it on the ground and cuddling it. When he finally looked up to see an unfamiliar face in the room, he hopped up to his feet confused. “Am I in the wrong room again?” he asked, looking around to see if anything looked familiar. Although AJ was usually very observant about his physically surroundings, not necessarily the people in them, his head was sometimes too high in the clouds for him to realize where he was.

When he turned to see Rhett standing in the doorway, he realized that he was in the right place after all. “Hey Rhett,” he said, waving. “You have a visitor?” He pointed to the other boy. It still hadn’t occurred to him that the other boy was probably a new roommate. “He’s got a really cute puppy. Is he staying long? He can have my bed if ya want.”

[Rhett Goddard]

"It's..." Rhett babbled softly.

He couldn't really understand much of what Izzy was saying, or trying to say. To him, it was pretty obvious that the reason he had smuggled the dog in was because it was forbidden to have pets in the dorms, unless they fit in a cage or aquarium, which was obviously not the case. Fortunately for Rhett, he didn't need to come up with some clever way to ask what Izzy meant by his question since Aaron entered through and dropped into the floor, apparently mimicking the dog, and playing with it for a moment. Rhett's only reaction to the, rather awkward, image was to stare with raised eyebrow. I don't get why people are like this with puppies and babies...

"It's actually mine." Rhett really couldn't believe the words out of his mouth: saying out loud the dog was his. Dieu, who have I become? "And boy-nicknamed-like-a-girl here, Izzy, is, in fact, our new roommate." Rhett sighed as the puppy walked up to Aaron and barked at him, probably demanding him to continue playing. "Shhh doggy!" Merde, I'm going to get into so much trouble. "Ugh, ok. Guess secret's out." Rhett sat in the floor and observed the white puppy be as playful as most puppies are. "I'm not the kind of people that asks favors." Even if it's, apparently, becoming something regular. "So I'll make it quick. We can get in trouble for a having a dog in the dorms, but it happens that he doesn't have anywhere else to go. So, can he..." The words were burning his lips as he pronounced them, apparently asking favors hurt. "...stay here for a while? All you need is to keep the secret. If something happens, I take responsibility."

[Izzy James]

Izzy raised his eyebrows at the other new arrival, quickly pegging him to be another roommate. He was tempted to suggest that the puppy could probably use the bed, when the first roommate picked up the conversation. Calling it a conversation at this point was being a little generous though, given that Rhett was prattling like he'd just been caught, well, breaking school rules.

"Hey, Izzy is totally a boy's name," was of course the first thing that came out of his mouth. He was tempted to mention the Guns 'N' Roses guitarist, but figured there were other things to focus upon: namely the illegal dog. Izzy listened, listened and stared at the illegal animal. He really, really didn't recall dogs being against the rules, which just meant that he probably hadn't read his rules manual right. Go figure.

He shifted, looking from pup to owner to other guy that hadn't introduced himself yet. "If he doesn't have anywhere else to go, I don't see as though we have a lot of choice." He frowned, looking down at the dog. Getting stuck with the animal didn't exactly sit well, and he really didn't want to start off by breaking rules. But leave an animal like that, a puppy, to God knows what? Wasn't happening.

"So, yeah, the dog can stay. Works for me anyway. Hope one of you has the right power to help keep him hidden though, because barking isn't exactly easy to hide," Izzy stared at the animal, considering. He did play and listen to music enough. That could work.

Oh, hell; barely ten minutes into knowing his new roommates and already Izzy was breaking rules. He was off to a great start.

[Jordan Scholl]

It had been a full day of classes, followed by a long group training session, but Jordan was finally able to retire to his room. He was really hoping that no one else was in so he wouldn't have to deal with facing any of his roommates--he wasn't really interested in meeting up with everyone again. He'd had some...uncomfortable confrontations in the past, and it was something he wanted to avoid as much as possible.

But he really needed to drop off his bag at least, and grab his card to go get some food from the cafeteria. And maybe he would get his guitar, too, so he could head outside and practice. Or even his soccer ball. These were the happy thoughts filling his head as he pushed open the door to his dorm room...

And froze.

Not only were there three people standing in the main room, but there was also a dog. Slowly, Jordan's gaze went from Rhett (who he didn't get along with at all), to AJ (who he knew and was on okay terms with), to the new guy (who he didn't know but wasn't really interested in learning about), to the puppy (who was rolling around on the floor and slobbering).

His eyes still trained on the dog, he took a step back, so that he was hovering in the doorway, one foot in the room and one foot outside.

"Why," he asked slowly, "is there a dog in the room?"

He looked up at the new person. "And who are you? You know we can't have dogs, right? You have to get rid of it."

[Aaron Walker]

AJ was surprise when Rhett admitted that the dog was his. Although AJ didn’t know Rhett that well, he didn’t think he was the sort of kid to sneak in a puppy. AJ wasn't about to start complaining though. He dropped down on his knees again to scoop up the puppy. “Of course he can stay,” AJ said.

He turned towards the new kid. “Oh,” he said, still messing around with the puppy. “You’re a fellow roommate. That makes sense too.” Letting the puppy go for a moment, he stuck out his hand to Izzy. “I’m AJ. I live here too. But I don’t really spend much time around the room. Well, I might now that we have a dog.”

When Jordan walked in, AJ started to excitedly tell the boy about their new pet. But it seemed that Jordan wasn’t really into the idea. “Please Jordan,” AJ said, “Izzy said it’s alright. Oh, yeah, you two don’t know each other. Well…guess you do now.”

“Shh,” he said to the dog as it continued to bark. He looked toward Rhett. “Maybe he’s hungry?”

[Rhett Goddard]

As Izzy agreed to the idea, Rhett couldn't help himself from smiling subtly. One down, two to go. He then shifted to look at AJ who was immediately ok with being part of hiding the dog from the Hammel staff. Guess that leaves it in hands our resident spy. Rhett was about to open his mouth in an attempt to say something close to 'thanks' when Jordan came through the door. He had been hoping Jordan had been listening to the entire conversation while invisible in a corner of the room so Rhett didn't had to go all over the asking the favor part, but luckily Aaron made the thing a lot easier by, very excitedly, asking first.

"Close the door, Scholl!" Rhett urged Jordan. He wasn't going to get caught so fast. "Yeah, maybe he is hungry." He replied to Aaron and walked back to his room, coming back with a white bowl filled with multicolored dog food. "There you go." He said as the puppy ran immediately towards it and started to eat while, still, wagging his tail. He then turned his attention to Jordan, maybe an additional incentive was to be made, making the kid remember that he knew about some of his extra-curricular activities with Mia. "Will you keep my secret? You know I know how to keep them." Rhett didn't mind if it sounded too much like a threat. "I'm even going to let you all pick his name if you agree. So, what do you say?" Which was a good idea, since the dog did need a name and Rhett had no idea how to name him or why. He walked to the middle of the room and turned around slowly while motioning a circle with his right hand. "Our little secret?"

[Izzy James]

Another new guy. Izzy raised a hand in greeting, but his position as "new roommate" was definitely overwhelmed by the furry addition. Not that Izzy really blamed anyone, though he felt like his smile was just a tad bit more forced than it would be otherwise.

He nodded to AJ: "Gotcha. But, yeah," he looked at the dog, shifting. What exactly should he be doing here? Did he really care that his roommate had a dog? Wasn't like the little guy was hurting anyone.

"It's not like he's doing any damage," said Izzy, pointing at the animal in question. "I mean, this doesn't really harm anyone, so it's just one of the stupid rules that schools put up to make everything all proper or something. So, yeah."

Izzy stuck his hands into his pockets, watching the dog march over to its food bowl and begin eating. Rhett had already started his own appeal for the dog to say, and it sounded slightly like bribery. Izzy thought he heard an edge there, something about how well Rhett kept secrets, but it was barely a slip, and probably nothing to worry about.

"I dunno," he said, focusing his attention back on the dog. "Shouldn't we call him something butch? Like, uh Rover or something?"

Needless to say, Izzy was the master of dog-naming.

[Jordan Scholl]

Izzy? The new guy's name was...Izzy? That didn't sound like a name, more like a biological function, but for the time being Jordan ignored that fact and focused on the idea that his three roommates were all trying to convince him to keep the dog.

For the moment he stepped into the room--sliding his bag further into the room with his foot--and shut the door behind him. He maintained a defensive posture by the doorway, though.

"I don't know, guys. Do you even remember what happened to some of those seniors who tried breaking the rules? I just don't think it's a good idea..."

And yet. And yet there was a dog in the room, and it had really big eyes. And was looking at him. Stupid dog.

Jordan sighed, watching the dog eat. He hadn't missed the almost-threat from Rhett, and while he wasn't too afraid that he would get in trouble he wasn't sure that he wanted to be banned from hanging out with people, either.

"How long for?" he asked, looking at the floor. "You can't keep a dog here forever. People are going to find out, you know. And then we're going to be in so much trouble."

He looked over at Izzy. "Why are we even going to name it? We're getting rid of it soon, right? It doesn't even need a name. Besides, since when has 'Rover' been a butch name? You might as well just call him 'Mutt' and not worry about the name."

[Aaron Walker]

AJ smiled as both Izzy, and it seemed Jordan as well, were going along with the idea of hiding the puppy. “This is gonna be so awesome,” he said, jumping up and down a little. He rubbed the puppy’s head as it enjoyed its food.

“Rover?” he said with disgust. “Mutt? What kinda horrible names are those?” He sat down beside the puppy on the floor with his arms crossed. “There’s no way I’m letting you guys give him a crappy name. Wait…it is a him, right?” AJ looked the puppy in the face, as if he expected the dog to answer his question.

“How about Rin-Tin-Tin. Ya know? Something epic,” he grinned up at his fellow roommates hoping they would agree.

He turned towards Rhett. “So did ya get any toys and stuff for him? I’ll bet I could rig him up a bed or a little house or whatever if ya want…ya know some place we could hide him?” He beamed at his roommates, clearly not worried about they whole getting caught part of this situation.

[Rhett Goddard]

Rover? Rhett frowned at Izzy's suggestion. Jordan talked afterwards and had a very good point, at some point, they will get caught with the dog in the dorms and they'll get in trouble if Rhett didn't solve the 'problem', before. It was so hard to consider the puppy a problem, though. Rhett stared at it while all the others talked, innocently eating while so many situations started to pop up from around him. He didn't think that it would bring him as much problem as Zac and Mia's actions brought upon themselves, because really there's no way to make a comparison between a dog and 'underage porn'.

He sighed. At least none of them were seniors, if they knew of Rhett's appearance in those dreadful pictures, the conversation may have turned awry.

"Dieu, Scholl, and I was supposed to be every party's party-pooper" Rhett took a breath. "Dog's getting a name because everyone needs a name and 'doggy' is gonna get burned out quickly." He replied Jordan in a rather aggressive tone. Mutt? Pf... "Take it as a code, in case any of you decides to talk about the dog outside the dorm, it's better if you say a name and not... dog."

Rhett was rather glad that Aaron had some sense by saying out loud how bad those names were. Even if he had no name ideas, he did know that those weren't even an option.

"Boyparts, Aaron." Rhett assured the boy as he sat on the floor, not surprised at all as his next comment, trying to call the puppy Rin-Tin-Tin. "Really? Epic? This is so gonna take forever..." He facepalmed himself. "I think a dog-house would have been too suspicious. The beach bag to hide him was big enough." He walked to the nearest place to sit and did so immediately. "But yeah I bought him toys. He seems busy enough with the food for the moment, though."

The blonde wondered how long it would take them to decide on a name for the dog. Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea to let them all pick the name, making three, apparently different enough, boys agree on something like that seemed more difficult than he had thought at first. Maybe the dog should decide.

"Ok, I got it." If life were more cartoon-ish, and Rhett weren't as cold as he usually is, a light-bulb would have appeared above his head. "Call him by some name, if he replies, there you go, he's chosen his own name." He rolled his eyes. "Unless, of course, any of you has a better idea."

((in case you're wondering, I think it's more fun if Rhett has no input on what names gets chosen and I'm pretty ok with any of you deciding rather than me ))

[Izzy James]

The newest entry, whom Izzy was already beginning to see was a gigantic buzzkill, kept insisting that they weren't going to keep the dog. Despite his inclination to never agree with anything the other guy said on principle, Izzy still found himself at least partially drawn to the logic. Dogs were tricky to hide. But there was something in the way Rhett was acting, plus Izzy had to admit that having a dog around would be interesting, if nothing else.

"Rover and Mutt are bad, but Rin-Tin-Tin is epic?" asked Izzy. He chuckled and bent down, trying to get closer to the dog's level. He hadn't bothered the fuddy-duddy, figuring that the other guy had more or less been outvoted by now anyway.

"So we need a name that sounds human then, right?" said Izzy, looking back up at Rhett. He jerked his head to Aaron, "and he's got the right idea. The dog's gonna need a bed or something. You can't just stick him in a back, not if you're actually going to keep him."

Izzy gave Rhett another look, one that clearly demonstrated how uneasy Izzy was about putting the canine's life in this guy's hand. Izzy shook his head: he didn't know any of them yet, and this wasn't the best first impression.

"How about Ringo?" offered Izzy, clearly still influenced by the Beatles collection behind him. "Sounds cool enough, and definitely goes both canine and, you know, human."

He looked around for a bit, before looking at the dog. He was already waving, trying to get the dog to come a little closer. Heck, Ringo had to be a better name than Mutt or Rin-Tin-Tin at least.